Software as a service, which is commonly referred as SaaS, is usually considered being software applications that are hosted by a vendor on the Internet and can be shared among several users under on-demand terms. There are some cases in which users can download the package could that will work until the term period ends. SaaS, as an underlying technology, is growing as one of the most prevalent delivery models that support Web services as well as service-oriented architecture (SOA). In-fact, SaaS is being made available to more and more users across the world with the growth of broadband services.

The On-Demand Computing software delivery models and ASP are closely interlinked to products of software as service products. SaaS has been commonly referenced as two slightly varying delivery modules, the first one being the hosted application management model that is equivalent to ASP, more often it is a commercially hosted module, which is available and delivered across the internet to actual users. The other one is software on-demand model, in which network-based access of a single copy of the software application is provided to users by ASPs (Application Service Providers). This specific application has been created for SaaS distribution.

Software as a service offers numerous benefits, and the most important ones are mentioned below:

• Easy to administer
• Automatic updates and management of patches
• Great compatibility as all users will get the same version of software
• Collaboration is much easier
• Global accessibility

Want to start the development of SaaS, are you aware of the concerns?

If you are having an objective to start a SaaS business, you should be well-versed with the technical as well as marketing skills. Even if you want to rent out a large portion of the software to a third party, there will still be need of a technically savvy director or manager in your company. Considering that your software development has been outsourced, there is a need of careful inspection by one of your experienced manager so as to find out whether the development is going well.

Marketing tasks for your software as a service should start a long before you move into the development of the software. This should be directed not only towards your competitor research, but also into SaaS already existing in the market as well as the conventional software that most of the targeted customers use. You cannot move ahead without extensive customer research, looking into the records of the target users. The information that you will get from these two researches done will be the most important data that you should have before introducing your development program.

Concerns of SaaS customers:

Software as a service is not a solution for every type of application and even not applicable to every user. There are many issues that customer face like security or storage concerns. However, in order to convince the customers about your services, you should be ready with the answers to all the queries raised by them and also convince them that your service are secure.

This is a guest post by Bhavna Singh from Ricoh. If you would like to write for Woblogger, Check our guest posting guidelines.

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